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Don’t Take on Audits in an Industry You Don’t Understand
Don’t try to wear too many hats. Pick your specialty area and become a guru.
By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future
Industry expertise is essential for businessmindedness. For me, the primary ingredient for building a successful audit practice is to avoid taking on work that you don’t understand. Too many firms say they can audit any balance sheet, but that’s when they can get into trouble. Many firms get sued because they made a bad business decision. They thought they could take on this unique industry and get it right. If you dabble in any industry, you will put your firm and yourself at tremendous risk.
MORE: Four Questions to Make Your Firm More Successful as a Business | Move to Advisory and Assurance with Relevance | How ‘Business Expert CPAs’ Get Their Own Business Wrong | Say Adios to Audit Fee Pressure | Eight Items to Cover in the Audit Exit to Deepen Client Relationships and Prove Value | Know Your Three Audit W’s | Planning Lays the Foundation of Audit Relevance | How Do We Drive Relevance in Audit? | Before the Audit: More Than Just Planning | Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection? | Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization
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When the U.S. Department of Labor looked at the quality of employee benefit plan (EBP) audits, they found plenty of problems. That 2014 study found “a clear link between the number of employee benefit plan audits performed by a CPA and the quality of the audit work performed.” Almost half of the firms the DOL looked at performed only one or two EBP audits per year, and 75 percent of those had deficiencies. Over half of those (56%) had five or more deficiencies.
You Have to Start Somewhere
Wishful thinking won’t move you forward.
By Ed Mendlowitz
The 30:30 Training Method
Question: Thanks for the training memo. Although I requested your memo because I know I need help with improving efficiency and the like with my practice, many of your thoughts and ideas I have already thought of but simply did not implement them.
MORE: Two Options for Collecting Past Due Fees | You Can’t Win with Lowballing | Yes, You Have to Share Work Papers | Should You Merge? Here’s How to Chart Your Path | Hold Staff Accountable If You Want Them to Listen to You | How to Raise Your Rates | Higher Fees to Start: Ten Ways to Make Your Tax Season Better | Three Ways to Start an Accounting Practice | Free Consultation? Not Always | Referral Fee? Forget It
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Response: I think you hit part of the nail on the head in what you wrote – you’ve had many of the ideas and “simply did not implement them.”
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Mandy Gallagher: Caregiving Isn’t a Side Issue – It’s a Workforce Issue | MOVE Like This
“Flexibility should be used as a tool for success. It shouldn’t be the exception.”
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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research
In this episode of MOVE Like This, Mandy Gallagher, lead manager of Women’s Initiatives at the AICPA, joins Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to discuss why caregiving has become such an important conversation in accounting, what firms may misunderstand about caregivers, and how greater flexibility and support could influence retention and leadership pipelines across the profession. Gallagher’s work focuses on advancing women’s initiatives, supporting professional development, and amplifying women’s perspectives throughout the profession.
MORE MOVE Like This | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network
One reason caregiving is getting more attention now is that it is both more visible and much broader than many people have traditionally assumed. Demographic shifts mean multiple generations are simultaneously balancing careers with responsibilities for children, aging parents, siblings, partners, friends, and others who rely on them. COVID also changed expectations around where and how work can happen. Employees experienced firsthand that they could remain productive while having enough flexibility to pick up a child or take a parent to a medical appointment. As more organizations return to traditional office expectations, those competing demands have become harder to reconcile.
The conversation challenges another long-standing assumption: that caregiving is primarily a women-with-young-children issue.
How Behavioral Finance Works
What does money mean to the client?
By Rory Henry
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management
I decided to call my book “The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management” because leveraging a suite of financial services offerings that work in harmony with each other is a powerful business model that can transform your firm. The transformative power of this model, however, is based on the human side of the advice we provide clients and how we can improve their lives. It’s about shifting the conversation from integrating and delivering services to clients to gaining a deep understanding of a client’s values and what gives them a sense of well-being.
MORE: Manage Change through A PACT | Priority No. 1: Your Mental and Physical Health | Trust Is the Primary Ingredient | How to Prepare Your Clients’ Kids for Their Inheritance | Annuities and Insurance Growing More Attractive | Quantifying the Value of an Advisor | Raise Your Rates to Change Your Clientele | How WealthTech Is Reshaping the Future of Holistic Advice | Profile of a Modern Firm: Putting the Vision into Practice | Tsunami of M&A, PE Is Disrupting the Accounting Profession | Introducing You to a Fulfilling Return on Relationships
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What is behavioral finance?
The Corporate Finance Institute defines behavioral finance as “the study of the influence of psychology on the behavior of investors, as well as on financial analysts.” Dr. Daniel Crosby, chief behavioral officer at Orion, and author of best sellers “The Behavioral Investor” and “The Laws of Wealth: Psychology and the Secret to Investing Success,” takes it a step further.
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How Accounting Staffing Has Changed
And two major drivers of that change.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset
“Treat people as they are and they will remain as they are. Treat people as they can be and should be and they will become as they can and should be.” – Goethe
“You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up, such as dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl. But I know I can be a lady to you, Colonel Pickering, because you always treat me as a lady and always will.” – Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”
MORE: Thirteen Traits of Partners You’ll Want to Keep | Six Rules for Keeping Partners Happy and Productive | Why Strategic Thinking Impacts Your Firm’s Future | Seven Things Good Firms Must Do | Five Ways to Separate Accounting Winners from Losers | Two Factors Determine Firm Profitability | Don’t Make Firm Profitability a Goal | Core Values: Why Your Firm Needs Them | Five Keys in Compensating New Managing Partners | Top 20 Tough Choices for the Partner Comp Committee | Voting on Ownership Basis? Three Better Methods | What Partners Do and Don’t Deserve
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The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: “There is nothing permanent except change.” People fly and drive cars instead of using horses and carts. Technology has replaced calculators, slide rules and the process for writing books. Food is purchased at grocery stores instead of grown on farms.
Drastic changes have occurred in the CPA industry as well. One of the biggest areas of change is how staff are managed and treated, as shown by this chart.
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